Pretty sure I've got 2-3. He's used 4 so far in the campaign and the last one he used was to increase his save against the mohrg. IIRC we can bank 3 at a time and I think we leveled after the mohrg. If so, he'd have 3 right now pending what we do about the dragon's attack. Pretty good chance he's going to have to spend 2 in this fight one way or the other though.

FYI, I have been swamped at work lately due to my supervisor leaving for another job and everyone picking up some of the slack of him being gone. I battling through it, but things may be going at a crawl for the short term.

My wife is sad that we didn't see any snow this winter so far (Seattle). It has actually been unseasonably warm and dry; last week the temperatures in the 60's had some flowers and trees fooled into thinking it was time to bloom. So, um, yeah. Happy, warm thoughts to you guys. I hope you guys are getting through okay.

So after being crazy swamped at work, then missing last week with my son's surgery, I returned to pandemonium today, with me having limited time to get ready for my road trip tomorrow. The day wasn't done and the call came to get my son because he has lice.

So things seem to be conspiring against me right now. Lately I haven't had time to post, though I have wanted to, last week I had time but not the urge.

So for the next 2 weeks I am walking away and letting things settle down and then get back into the swing of things again.

FYI, Saturday Feb 18th is the next home game of AoW, this time on the road to Iowa.

Also I have finished my sign up for GaryCon in Lake Geneva at the end of March, if anyone is coming.

Yeah, good luck getting through the rest of the pandemonium. Glad to hear you son is ok. See you back here in a couple weeks. I was having trouble with the GaryCon registration. Sounds like I'd better try again before everything is gone.

Day 1 of registration was a bust. I hoofed it back from Comic Con (and a picture with Bruce Campbell!) to be able to register and the site was down for hours. Their ISP shut them down as they thought it was a denial of service attack.

Then they moved it to Tuesday and I missed the start time by two hours due to my son recovering. (which was ok)

I didn't get much I wanted, but still managed to fill my days up with some good stuff!

So I am happy to announce we have finished Age of Worms in my home game! We probably would have gone one more game session but we kind of fast forwarded to the end and completed the campaign! I don't have the exact date of when we started but it had to have been in early 2009, so it was pretty much a 6 year campaign that included out first game using 3.5 rules, our second game Pathfinder BETA, and our third game the Core Rules and adding as we went on.

We stopped early to watch Wrath of Khan for a Leonard Nimoy tribute. (and a surreal feeling at the end)

We have been talking for awhile on doing pirate game next, so it looks like we will be starting Skull and Shackles in June! Potentially using the Kirthfinder alternate rules.

I have to admit, high level play in Pathfinder is not my favorite. Before pathfinder we never went past level 12 or so in 3.x rules. In my Monday home game we have finished Runelords, Crimson Throne, Way of the Wicked, and Carrion Crown. Those all ended around 16-18. I also played in King Maker and a Pathfinder version of Temple of Elemental Evil which both stopped around 14-16. This was my first level 20 campaign.

So some thoughts:

First we drink heavily in these times we get together so we are not always at our best mentally by the end of the night, though I would also add this as making it easier too! :)

The opportunities to role play begin to wane as the levels increase, so while we love combat, it turns from all the crazy shenanigans we did as players between combat to the crazy combat things which aren't as memorable, though we had some good ones!

Playing less frequently and having a slew of abilities tended for us to "forget" some things that playing more frequent would have helped.

High level play begins to introduce more combat situations where buffs are needed and damage going back and forth can be crazy. So everyone had to be on their game a little bit more and damage mitigation/healing was important. So the cleric (which ended up being a cohort after the cleric went to inquisitor) turned into the healer/buffer/debuffer.

We also had a list of buffs for each player that was the "default" setting once we got past 15th level (assuming no surprise attack or mass debuffing situation) so we didn't have to constantly re-do everything. The Wizard had the wizard feat which allow him to use wands as his level and cranked out wands for everything we wanted. (Barkskin, Shield of Faith, stoneskin for the front line, Death Ward eventually, etc). Then with 5 people we generally figured out how much that would cost and pooled money for that. Sometimes the 5 charges last a fight, sometimes we could get more out of them. Money around level 18 or so really wasn't an issue anymore.

Overall we play to have fun and hang out together. We are looking forward to a new start though!

I think it has to do a little bit of both. I love the process of making a character and building them up both as a character and as a set of numbers. As you get higher that growth bottoms out some. I have the same issue with many of the video games I play where when you reach that plateau or slow growth my interest starts to wane a bit.

I think high level can be fun, it just tends to have a little different focus.